


We Lie To Each Other

by philcollins



Category: Zero Dark Thirty
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 9,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philcollins/pseuds/philcollins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zero Dark Thirty, Dan/Maya. "In another universe, we're getting married and pushing baby carriages, Maya,” he tells her. Her spine prickles at his words. He gauges her reaction, calibrated eyes looking for her tell so he knows which card to play next. But she’s the goddess carved out of stone, isn’t she?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

2003

 

Maya finds shade, isolated, away from the boxes and the guards, away from death metal bleeding through concrete. She’s sweaty and sticky under her suit jacket. Her clothes are all wrong for this place, she packed wrong. Her skin is wrong – she forgot to pack sunblock. She sucks down bottled water, choking on it, her throat tight. Strange fucked up place, how water is life and how water is a weapon here.

 

Seeing is different. Participating - something else. She didn’t expect to have to participate, not like that, that’s not her job. She didn’t _have_ to, she could’ve said no. “Grab that bucket.” She did. “Put some water in it.” She did it. Like she was his assistant or something. It didn’t occur her to say no.

 

It’s hard to get the cap back on the bottle because her hands are shaking. Because she can’t see. Tears burn her eyes.

 

“You alright?” Dan asks, coming up behind her.

 

It wasn’t hard to find her. That’s what he does. He’s aware of the way she turns her face away, not toward, the way she swipes at her eyes, the way she says “I’m fine” too quickly. That’s what he does - notice things. He lights a cigarette. The wind whips the smoke away, whips loose strands of her hair like tassels. Not dyed, that color red, he can tell.

 

He’s an edgy presence beside her. He clears his throat. “You know, it’s okay—“

 

“Fucking sand in my eyes,” she cuts him off, hard.

 

“The wind here, it doesn’t stop this time of year. Gets the sand and grit in your hair, your ears, every fucking crevice. The Loo,” he tells her.

 

“What?”

 

“The name of the wind. Comes up the Indo-Gangetic Plain toward the Himalayas. The Loo.”

 

Now she looks at him. “The _Loo_.”

 

He laughs a little. “Yeah. The Loo.” That gets a smile out of her, too. He looks different when he smiles, the crinkles softening his ice blue eyes.

 

They lapse into silence. “ _When you lie to me, I hurt you_ ” – it echoes in her ears like it echoed in that room. Who is this man, wild-haired and inked-up, standing here being nice to her, pretending she’s not crying?

 

He touches her shoulder, squeezes it. Brief. Her flinch doesn’t escape him. “You’ll get used to it,” he says. She nods and gulps down water. “Alright?” She nods again. “Alright.” He knows she won’t last a month in this place.


	2. Chapter 2

 

2005

 

 

They finish their second drinks in silence because the TV’s showing London yet again. Double-decker bus without a double-deck, smoke-filled streets. Playing pieces being shuffled around, their world an elaborate Stratego game with really fucked up rules. Dan stares at the TV like he’s trying to memorize every frame. She already has. She stares at the ‘A’ tattooed on his wrist instead. She never asks what it means.

 

“You know anything about quantum physics?” he asks, scratching at his beard.

 

“Why, do you have a PhD in that, too?”

 

“Can’t do math for shit. I read a lot. The uncertainty principle, Schrödinger’s cat, all that - you’re familiar at least, right?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“There’s this one approach to quantum theory, the Many Worlds approach. Parallel universes.”

 

“Okay...” They probably should’ve stopped drinking a while ago.

 

“An infinite number of them. Any outcome quantum mechanics says has a nonzero probability _happens_ in its own separate world. _Everything_ that’s possible actually _happens_. An infinite number of alternate realities. That’s what the math says if you follow it out.”

 

“Dan.” She wraps on the bar top to get his attention, get his thousand yard stare down to half a yard, get it on her, here, now.

 

He knows he gets stuck in his head too much, lost in the intellect people underestimate when they look at him. “In another universe, Maya, this, today?” He waves his empty glass at the TV. “Never happened. Nine-Eleven never happened. UBL was never born, Bush was never born, Barney the fucking Dinosaur never happened, Hitler won World War Two.” He gets even further away, his voice gone quiet. He’s picking at the dried blood under his fingernails. “In another universe, we’re not here, My. We’re someplace else, doing something else.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like teaching quantum physics and building houses, getting married and pushing baby carriages,” he answers. Her spine prickles at his words. He gauges her reaction, calibrated eyes looking for her tell so he knows which card to play next. But she’s the goddess carved out of stone, isn’t she? He leans on the bar, groaning, tugging at his hair like it hurts. “I’m getting outta here.”

 

She doesn’t budge. She’s angry with him and she’s not sure why. Her eyes can be just as icy as his. “Does it help, _any_ of that?” she asks. Her finger jabs the scarred wood, spearing her words. “This, all of this, it’s as real as it gets. What’s the point of thinking about alternate realities, parallel universes, thinking about how none of this might be happening someplace else? Does that help you sleep at night, Dan?”

 

“I sleep fine.” His voice indifferent and unconvincing. He shrugs. “It’s just a job, Maya.”


	3. Chapter 3

 

2006

 

 

Dan stares blankly at the monitor. There’s no shame watching from the monitor.

 

The subject’s face fills the screen, his lovely and fearsome interrogator always off-camera. Dan can’t see Maya but can hear. She sounds like him, his words coming out of her mouth. He made her this way, cutting her from his cloth every day. A meaty arm and thick fist enter frame from time to time to crack the subject in the face – done at Maya’s bidding but she needn’t get the blood on her hands. She’s smarter than Dan’s ever been.

 

The man-child lieutenant sitting next to him takes his little notes. Dan hates this place. Bagram’s got eyes. They shouldn’t be working out of here anymore. Army CIC already combed through this place looking for any and all Army personnel they could round up and prosecute for that shit four years, but who says they’re done? Who says CIA won’t be made examples of, too, hung out to dry? A couple detainees died here – no one cared in 2002, good riddance. A few years later, it’s a different story. It’s sentences being handed down.

 

Hell, he was here in 2002. Those days were the Wild West. The blood of three thousand Americans was on the hands of every motherfucker wearing a tablecloth on his head. Victim #1, Mullah Habibullah – well, he was Taliban, and that’s what they came to do, ultimately, wasn’t it. Kill Taliban. Fuck it, right? Victim #2, though, that taxi driver, Dilawar... He was just a taxi driver. It shouldn’t have happened. But it did.

 

The blood is on his hands.

 

One innocent versus three thousand - it hadn’t mattered in 2002. But the sands are shifting, a different wind blowing. D.C., America, they’re getting distracted, losing the plot. But here it’s so goddamn easy to have tunnel vision. And walking around like that? Every next step could be into quicksand.

 

If Maya doesn’t get somewhere in the next five minutes, he’s pulling her out, calling a break. He wants out of this chair, out of this stale, airless hallway, away from this monitor, he wants to shave off this fucking beard, he wants his smokes. He can’t smoke in here, this is a non-smoking building - fucking nonsense. He wants to go visit his monkeys. No one understands his monkeys. Well, Maya understands. Perfectly.

 

At four minutes thirty-seven seconds, she puts an end to the interrogation. She comes out of the room fishing M&Ms from her pocket, crunching them – her own oral fixation. She looks blank, absent, her pale skin ashy and too tight on her finely shaped face. There’s blood on her blouse.

 

He grabs her wrist. “My.”

 

She pops M&Ms, nodding. “We’ll break that asshole in two, don’t worry. Everybody breaks.” He nods, still clinging to her wrist, a sinking man. Deep creases age her eyes when she smiles at him. “Dude, you want a coffee?”

 

He should have given Maya the same courtesy he gives their Muslim friends in the sally ports, he should have warned her, been honest: I am bad fucking news. I’m not your friend. I’m not gonna help you. I’m gonna break you and turn you into me.


	4. Chapter 4

 

2006-2008

 

He calls her. In the middle of the night. _His_ middle of the night. Bright afternoon glare out her window contrasts sharply with the three a.m. gravel in his voice. She doesn’t know what to make of it.

 

“How’s D.C.?”

 

“Pretty fucked up.” He suddenly sounds supremely frustrated, angry, unmoored. “It’s inert. It’s fucking bullshit. Now I remember why I left.” Something cold runs through her. He misses this place. The violence here. The control over another. The simplicity of muscle and pain.

 

“Dan. You should talk to someone—“

 

“I’m talking to you, Maya.”

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“I’m fine,” he says.

 

* * *

 

 

He keeps calling her, regular-like. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t call Jessica or Jack or Joseph in the middle of the night.

 

“How’re our friends doing? Our monkeys.”

 

_Those_ friends. “It’s all in the reports, Dan.”

 

“How are _you_ doing is what I guess I meant.”

 

Fuck him. She can’t tell him she feels alone here, doing this shit. Or that she’s still trying not to feel dependent on him. That she feels like she’s got Stockholm Syndrome, like _she_ was his prisoner. Like his presence here was some sort of approval, made it okay, what they were doing. She can’t tell him she’s not sure anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

He sounds different on the other end of the line. Less coiled, calmer.

 

“Doing anything _normal_ these days?” she asks idly, flexing her sore hand.

 

“I went golfing.”

 

She tries to picture it. His wild hair and dark jeans, old Zeppelin t-shirt, stomping around a green in steel-toed boots, taking a nine iron to the kneecap of someone trying to play through. “That’s fucked up.”

 

The line crackles with his chuckle. “Gotta play the game. Sometimes literally. I’m getting better at it. You?”

 

There are scabs on her knuckles. Yes, she regrets how they got there. He’d tell her to wear gloves. “I don’t play golf.”

 

“It’s boring,” he agrees.

 

“You could always come back here.”

 

“Or you could come here.” His voice is smiling in her ear, low and private, just for her. Why? Is there someone else there? Someone with him in his apartment in the middle of the night? She doesn’t like how that thought makes her feel. She’s too old for that shit.

 

* * *

 

 

“When’s the last time you had a vacation, My?”

 

“Don’t need one.”

 

“Everyone needs one, it’s normal. We want you to take some R-n-R, a week, two weeks--”

 

“We? Who is we?”

 

“The Wolf. George. Me. Mostly me. Dubai, Kuwait City, Rome, London, Greece, wherever you want, you can be there tomorrow, I’ll meet you.”

 

Quickly said. Like he’s trying to slip it in there, a subliminal message. Like it hasn’t seized all of her attention.

 

A small hotel on a narrow street. A small room with a balcony. The bed takes up most of the room. She traces his tattoos and his scars. She tastes his skin and grabs his hair. His fingers are calloused and his palms rough. She’s his prisoner and he hers. The most they see of the city is from their balcony.

 

He’s still talking. “...Naxos, it’s less crowded. Or rent a boat in Croatia, island hop. Live on the boat and lie on the deck in nothing but sunglasses.” A conspicuous lack of pronouns. _You_ , _me, we, us_. The two of _us_ lying on the deck in nothing but sunglasses. _We_ fuck in the sun for a week.

 

“I don’t tan,” she finally manages. “And I don’t need you checking up on me and trying to protect me, Dan. Fuck, I can take care of myself.”

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn’t call her for a month, except in an official capacity. During business hours. _His_ business hours. She stops taking lunch at her desk. She stops pretending she doesn’t expect his call and simply _doesn’t_.

 

A month stretches into longer.

 

* * *

 

 

She calls him when she finally gets home, more than twenty-four hours later. The story’s all over the TV, the hotel rubble still smoking. Her ears are still ringing. Her car’s fucked, she realizes dimly.

 

“There’s dust and soot in my hair still--”

 

“Are you injured?” he interrupts.

 

“No.” She takes a shake breath. Her hands are shaking. “God, if we’d been sitting on the other side of the restaurant--”

 

“Try to get some sleep.”

 

“Dan--” Tears ache behind her eyes.

 

“There’ll be trauma counselors arriving at the Embassy tomorrow. You can talk to someone.”

 

“I’m trying to talk to _you_!” Her fucking voice cracks. He’s quiet for a moment too long. Jessica asked if she had any friends. She thought of Dan and shook her head no.

 

She closed that window on him. She fucked up. She wants it open again.

 

“I’m fine,” she tells him, hanging up the phone.


	5. Chapter 5

 

2009

 

On the last day of the year she boards a plane. She won’t make it back to D.C. until tomorrow. She knows she won’t be able to sleep – she never could sleep on planes. Jack offers her a pill, which she refuses. She has to think. Her friend is dead. Her Abu Ahmed lead is dead. She has to _think_. Jessica is dead. She has to do better. Make it better. Everything. _Everything_. She can’t fucking _think_.

 

What now?

 

Find everyone. Smoke them.

 

How?

 

She can’t put her thoughts in order.

 

What the hell does she do now?

 

Kill them.

 

Kill who? Kill them all? Who can she kill?

 

Where does she start over? How?

 

What do you do next when you’ve been chasing a ghost for five fucking years?

 

What do you do when you best friend dies chasing ghosts?

 

_Never_ make close friendships in this place, this work. She knew better.

 

Jessica and the others are already on their way, their bodies loaded onto a cargo plane, their caskets blanketed with red, white, and blue. The boxes are mostly...representational. Mostly empty boxes will make it to D.C. before she will. She knows there isn’t much left of Jessica, if anything, or of any of them. Broken parts, bits and pieces to rest in the earth. The rest returned to the earth. Back to the universe, Dan might say, cuz we’re all made of star stuff, we’re all mostly empty space.

 

There’s mostly empty space inside her.

 

* * *

 

 

The memorial service is in the Bubble. She gets there early, no place else to be. She sits near the front, off to the side, and stares at the line of photos of the dead. She feels numbed through.

 

The seats fill up behind her, all the way to the back of the auditorium. Standing room only. A sea of black suits and polished shoes and clean fingernails. There’s still sand in her hair, in her shoes, omnipresent. She restlessly tugs at the sleeves of her suit jacket. Quiet chatter all around her, but no one talks to her.

 

The Director walks in, followed by a cadre of assistant directors and advisors, a huddle of grim, identical-looking men trailing the alpha. She looks again, spots the Wolf. He looks different to her now. Shorter, smaller. Older. She’s older, too. His protégé no longer. And then she realizes she’s hearing him. Not the Wolf - no, someone else. She’s been looking right at him all this time. Like staring at something so big you can’t even see it.

 

She’s been expecting him but trying not to, anticipated seeing him but unable to yet. She finds she’s nonetheless unprepared.

 

It’s Dan.

 

One of them. One of the huddle. One of the suits. Shiny shoes and slick hair. She’d know him anywhere by his stance alone, she’d know that voice out of a billion others, and yet she can hardly recognize him. His face... It looks wrong so shorn. His unruly hair is too neat, his shirt too crisp and pants too pressed. He looks like Samson after Delilah. She stares openly. She doesn’t know this man.

 

He finds her looking. His eyes find hers. She remembers fire and ice in his gaze – it’s cool and flat now. No flicker of recognition on his bare face. No acknowledgement. His gaze slides on by and away.

 

She’s never felt more alone.

 

She belongs in the desert, not here.

 

The Director and Deputy Director take the dais and the room settles, quiets, the huddle breaks up. The other assistant directors and section chiefs sit in the front row. Not Dan. He could, should. But he peels off, heading toward her, right toward her.

 

Dan edges past the man sitting on the aisle and takes the empty seat beside her. Fills the empty space. A tight, quick, grimacing smile and answering nod are all they can share.

 

The Deputy Director sets the table for the Director. Their esteemed leader takes the podium. She longs for a stirring sermon to unleash an outpouring of grief and confusion and frustration, all the things she must bottle up. She wants the aisles to run with the tears of her hundreds of colleagues, en masse emotional release, howls of pain filling the room. But the congregation is silent, buttoned and bottled like her, everyone trained so well in the art of being “fine”.

 

The Director’s words are disappointingly rote, pro forma, diplomatic and patriotic. He didn’t know any of them. He didn’t know Jessica. He didn’t know she baked cakes and hated peanut butter and played volleyball in college.

 

She feels Dan shift beside her, his arm moving on the armrest. His hand finds hers, takes it, holds it. A simple squeeze - signifying nothing and meaning everything. He doesn’t let go. Nor does she. She won’t. His hand is warm. Her numbness thaws around the edges.

 

She’s still here and Jessica is dead, so many are dead.

 

She’s still here. She’s still here.

 

_Why_ is she still here?

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

2010

 

She doesn’t ask much, does she? Move heaven and earth, huh? Hang his ass out in the wind because she has a _hunch_ , well-informed as it might be? He’ll do it. He’s the only one who can do it for her, and she’s the only one who can get away with asking him to do it. Somehow managing to Lazarus her dead Abu Ahmed lead has brought her back to life, too – he can hear it in her voice over the line. And frankly _that’s_ why he’ll do it.

 

Will it bring them UBL? It might, might not; at the end of the day who the fuck knows. Does UBL even matter anymore? Maybe, maybe not, the jury is decidedly out.

 

That’s the magic of D.C. – _everything_ is possible! Missions can be accomplished prematurely; WMDs might certainly be out there somewhere; Guantanamo will definitely be closing down; taking bets on toxic debt has got to be good for the economy. It’s amusing.

 

“Where are you?”

 

“Kuwait City.” The distinct silence on her end of the line sounds like surprise. And indeed that was his intention. K.C. is only two hours behind Islamabad, a four-hour flight. He shuffles around on the plush carpeting, barefooted, choosing his words carefully. “I’m at the Sheraton.”

 

Another silence. “For how long?”

 

Shouldn’t be more than a day longer - he’s waiting on his contact. “For as long as I need to be,” he tells Maya. “I’m working on something here.”

 

“Your tan?”

 

He laughs, feeling it in his chest. “If I can.”

 

She’s quiet again. He can hear her pen tapping. Thinking. Analyzing. Besides rabid tenacity and stubbornness, what makes her a good analyst is instinct. Maybe her instincts tell her to stay away from him. She should always listen to her instincts. “Dan?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Good night.”

 

* * *

 

 

Moving heaven and earth costs the taxpayers his flight to Kuwait City, his hotel room and liberal use of the mini bar, VIP bottle service at the club, the services of that Asian hottie for his contact, and $400,000 for the Lambo. Cheap.

 

_He’s_ the expensive item in the budget. His expertise. His experience. His connections. His skill. His failed marriage. His loneliness. His pack-a-day habit. His sleepless nights. His nightmares. His ass. But no one will ever see those things in the line item.

 

So what does all of it add up to? A slip of paper with a phone number written on it. He was right – it only took a day. After it comes through, he goes for a swim, works on his tan solo.

 

He’s on a plane later that same day.

 

* * *

 

 

When he walks into the bullpen, she’s at her desk, a fury, a flurry: up to her ears in files and binders; working both computer screens at once; popping some snack item into her mouth every ten seconds; texting on her phone. Full on Maya mode. It’s good to see again.

 

He shoves his hands in his pockets, feeling the scrap of paper in there, and silently walks up behind her, slow, watching. He fishes the bit of paper out and leans over her shoulder, invading her space. She freezes, tense under him. She tries to look, see who it is. He places the scrap of paper down before her, taps it.

 

“Heaven and earth,” he says.

 

The tension leaves her body like liquid. She smells like sweat and sweet flowers. Her fingers smooth the paper. How does she keep her nails so neat? “Is this...”

 

“Abu Ahmed AKA Sayeed’s mother in Kuwait City.”

 

“Fuck,” she breathes out, leaning back in her chair – just a little, just enough to lean against him. “Thank you, Dan.”

 

His instinct shoves him over the line and he curls his arm around her. Hugs her to him. She leans into it. She lets him hold her. “Who’s your best friend, huh?”

 

And the moment breaks. She leans forward, pulling away, reaches for her bowl of M&Ms. He gives her space, a little, props himself against the corner of her desk. She crunches M&Ms.

 

She looks different since the last time he saw her just a few months ago in D.C. She looked oddly out of place in Langley, like a strange doppelganger of herself; despite her hair and clothes being just as he always remembered, she looked _off_. Now she looks like the _real_ Maya, at home and in her element. Her worn-out jeans and dusty Chuck Taylors are definitely against CIA office dress code – but he figures no one says shit about it, they just let her do her thing. When he was here, no one ever said shit to him about dress codes either.

 

She talks with M&Ms in her mouth. “Look at you, fresh off the plane from K.C., rockin’ your best suit.”

 

Suddenly the irony of it all hits him like a muscle spasm. He tugs at his jacket, straightens it. The suit is snug, but it’s supposed to be. “Not bad, right? Huh? Can’t be showing up in the K.C. looking like some saggy-ass FBI bum, am I right?”

 

The little smile playing at her mouth, her eyes moving over him, tells him she thinks it’s not bad at all. “You grew your beard again.” He shrugs. Any excuse not to shave. She waves the scrap of paper at him. “Okay, so really. How the hell did you get this?”

 

“Take me out to dinner, I’ll tell you everything.”

 

“Can’t eat out, it’s not safe,” she says immediately, stiffly, by rote. She suddenly busies herself with something on her desk, won’t look at him. She’s bottling up the ghosts of the past and maybe that’s his fault – she tried to talk to him after the hotel bombing and he shut her down. Because he spent most of that day thinking she was fucking _dead_.

 

He never told her that.

 

“My--“

 

“Let’s get a drink.”

 

* * *

 

 

The staff bar in the basement may be the most secure spot in the embassy; its official use is as a bomb shelter. They have Doritos and Stella Artois for dinner, tequila for dessert, more tequila for after-dinner. Back home it would be said they close down the bar, but this isn’t actually a bar, it’s a bomb shelter. It doesn’t close, it just empties out around three. Leaves them there alone.

 

“So do you ever miss it?”

 

Absolutely. And absolutely not. It’s hard to answer. “It’s simpler here, in a fucked up way.”

 

“I can see that.”

 

She empties the tequila bottle into their glasses. Why is the last drink always one drink too many? He feels gross. “Shit. I gotta be at the airport in three hours.”

 

“What?” She stares at him like she’s caught off guard. “Back to D.C.? Already?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She fiddles with the empty bottle, picks at the label. “Oh.”

 

“What?” She shakes her head but he’s not fooled. “You thought maybe I was staying on? Help you look for Ahmad--I mean, Sayeed?”

 

“I could use the help, Dan.”

 

“Since when?” he answers, loose-tongued. “You can take care of yourself, can’t you?”

 

She pins him with a glare, no less sharp behind all the drink. “What the fuck’s that mean?”

 

He shakes his head, backing down, sorry he was drunk enough to say something that stupid. “I _know_ you can, Maya, that’s not--“

 

“No no no, you and George and Bradley, all of you, you think ‘cuz I have tits I don’t have any balls. I’m just ‘the girl’. I’m just ‘on the rag’. And when I get forceful, you call it emotional. So fuck yeah I can take care of myself because I _have_ to.”

 

“Maya--“

 

“You gonna tell me to calm down? Or that I’m being paranoid?”

 

“Maya, I don’t wanna take care of you because you’re a woman or ‘cuz I think you’re _weak_ or whatever kinda shit! I am on your side, I am always on your side, you know that. I wanna take care of you because--“ He catches himself. “Because you’re my friend.“

 

She slides off her stool, steadies herself on the bar. “I think I’ll go home, actually.” He’s gotta stop her but when he grabs her elbow, she pulls free easily. “I don’t need any more friends, thanks.”

 

“Because friends die.” That stops her. “Because it’s better to keep everyone away than to keep losing them, right? But you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That’s no way to live. So what’re we supposed to do, huh?”

 

“I don’t know.” She sounds tired.

 

He tries again, more gently, wrapping his hands around her wrists. She doesn’t pull away this time. “Maybe I do wanna protect you from it. I tried before, that’s why I wanted you to go back to D.C. with me. I’m asking it again.” His hands meet her and he tugs her closer. “Come home with me, Maya. There’s gotta be more to our lives than just...”

 

He touches her face, the backs of his fingers whispering over her cheek. She’s blushing prettily – she probably hates that madly, how it softens her smooth mask. Her eyes won’t meet his but settle on his mouth. He leans closer. He can smell the tequila warm in her mouth.

 

“I can’t,” she says softly. The blush is gone. “Not until it’s done.”

 

Now she meets his eyes and he reads the resolve no one can break. But maybe there’s something else – hope or promise. He’s not sure he feels it. Their lives are so short. _Until it’s done_. That could be a year from now, that could be never. He doesn’t agree with her but he can’t change her. So he nods. He kisses her cheek. He lets her go.

 

A couple hours later, he’s on the plane, feeling like he’ll never see her again.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

2011 Pt. I

 

 

Her desk was spotlessly clean when she arrived her first day back at Langley; she didn’t have to wipe off a thick coat of dust like she did her first day in Islamabad. The sounds of Georgetown outside her apartment window aren’t... _foreign_ enough, for lack of a better word. Everything smells disinfected everywhere. She keeps getting turned around the wrong way in once-familiar buildings. Even the M &Ms taste different.

 

Of course she’s not glad to be back.

 

She’s supremely frustrated. She needs to be back there, to keep everything going. If she’s not cracking the whip, it’ll just fall apart, all her work, she knows it. She trusts Hakim, she trusts Larry and ground branch, she trusts Jack and the others, but this is not their baby, not their responsibility, not their mission. Not the same way it is hers.

 

And Dan, well... He’s been gone. She thought he’d be here upon her return to D.C. - not to hold her hand and lead her down the hallways, but at least to offer a friendly face and a few words of wisdom on the transition back to “normal.” Maybe take her out for a welcome home drink. Maybe be glad she’s home finally and try to...

 

Well, anyway. He’s been out of the country. She can’t find out where or why or when he’ll be back. It pisses her off. Just as she’s yanked out of the field, he’s back in it.

 

* * *

 

 

She gets the call on her cell phone. Larry is the one to tell her.

 

“We found what you’re looking for.”

 

“Don’t fuck with me.”

 

“Hakim got eyes on it. Sending details now.”

 

She pounds her palm against her desk. Heads pop up over cubicles to glare at her. Relief floods her whole body, makes her almost want to cry it feels so good. The knotted stomach of a life-long control freak starts to slacken. For the moment. “Dude, next time I see either of you guys, the drinks are on me.”

 

“I’ll hold you to that. Hey, remember what I told you before?”

 

_Everyone’s gonna want to know this. Stick to your guns, now more than ever._

 

“Yeah.”

 

“That goes double now.”

 

“Thanks, Larry.” She closes her eyes, sees his face, sees Hakim’s. She sends her thoughts through the wire: Keep safe always, my friends, please. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

 

And there he is. Smoking like a chimney on the cafeteria patio.

 

She sees him through the windows and stops in her tracks. She only ran downstairs for a latte, something foamy and sweet to celebrate Larry’s call, the best phone call _ever_ , before getting down to the big business at hand. She changes her mind and takes her latte outside. He’ll want to share in this with her, she knows.

 

He’s staring at the ground and leaning over, his back to her, the muscles under his white shirt tight like bowstrings under tension.

 

“Dan.”

 

He doesn’t move. Smoke swirls around him. She says his name again but it’s like he’s on another planet, so damn far and not more than an arm’s length away now. She can see gray in his wavy hair. She itches to put her fingers in his hair. But she reaches for his shoulder. As soon as her fingers touch white cotton, he’s on his feet, his chair crashing into her shin.

 

“Fuck!” he barks, spinning on her, eyes flashing dangerously, spearing her.

 

She holds up her hand, her latte. “I’m sorry. Jesus.”

 

He curses again under his breath, harsh, shoves his hands through his hair. God, she’s never seen him so tense. “Don’t...you shouldn’t sneak up on people, huh?”

 

“I called your name. Twice.”

 

“Well I didn’t fucking hear you!”

 

She stares at him, her hackles up, her bubble bursting. This is not what she ever expected. He was running so hot the last time she saw him, in Islamabad, and now he’s radiating colder than an open freezer. Nice to fucking see you, too, Dan.

 

“Dan--“

 

“I have a meeting.” He drops his cigarette, crushes it under his shoe.

 

“They found him,” she says. “UBL. His compound. I just got the call.” She can’t help the excitement creeping into her voice. “We did it, we _found_ him, Dan--”

 

“You have eyes on UBL?”

 

“On his compound.”

 

“But you have eyes _on_ bin Laden _inside_ a compound,” he presses.

 

“Well, no, we have Abu Ahmed--“

 

“Then you don’t have him.”

 

“It’s _got_ to be--“

 

“Don’t get all excited. You need to do better than that.”

 

“Dan, it’s me. I _know_ \--“

 

“I can’t be late for this meeting,” he cuts in, walking away, heading inside. She watches that loping, familiar gait. Her jaw is tight, her throat is tight with burning anger and...and _embarrassment_. She feels like she just ran face first into a glass wall.

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

2011 Pt. II

 

 

She glares at Dan across the table. He said once he was on her side, always on her side - _horseshit_. She thought Dan would ultimately back her up in front of the Director, but when it comes down to it? He gives it a “soft sixty”. Fuck him.

 

George gives the Director an eighty-percent assurance.

 

Fine, then it’s up to her to say what no one else has the balls to say. It’s always up to her because she’s the motherfucker, right?

 

* * *

 

 

She hurries to catch up to him in the corridor. “Dan.” He doesn’t stop but she knows he heard her this time. “Dan.”

 

“Not now, huh?”

 

And he makes his escape, pushes into the men’s bathroom. She waits, stands guard at the door. He’s not going to get away from her.

 

No. Fuck it. She follows him in.

 

He’s standing at a urinal when she barges in. He glances over his shoulder, laughs. “Jesus Christ, Maya.”

 

“What the hell was that? Sixty-percent? No, I’m sorry. _Soft_ sixty?”

 

He faces the wall and starts to piss. “That was my honest assessment--“

 

“Based on the principle of covering your ass?“ She can smell his piss.

 

“ _Based on_ the veracity and reliability of the information and the means by which it was collected,” he says in that even, cool voice. It’s like he’s reading a memo.

 

She stares, flabbergasted, seething. “Are you fucking kidding me?” She hates her shrillness, its echo. “You were _right there with me_ \--“

 

“Exactly.” He finishes and she looks away as he shakes himself dry. She hears his zipper. “I was there, I know the level of bullshit those hadjis espoused. They’d say fucking anything to make it stop--“

 

“You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, Dan. You’ve been _institutionalized_ \--“

 

“And you’ve lost all objectivity. You’re obsessed.” He slams on the faucet handle, turns on the spray. Scrubs his hands under the hot water and ignores her furious stare in the mirror. “You’ve been pushing to bomb that compound to dust. Fuck the details, fuck the consequences. Fuck any evidence, any intel that might be there. Fuck any concrete proof he’s actually there. That’s _insane_ and you know it. You’ve lost all perspective.”

 

In a cooler state, she might be tempted to admit he has a point. She’s not in a cooler state. “What about Ammar?” she bites out. He doesn’t answer, still scrubbing his at hands. “Was Ammar just telling us what we wanted to hear?” She doesn’t believe it. She _can’t_. The water’s steaming now. His skin is getting red. He keeps scrubbing, harder, harder. She has to know what he thinks. “Do you really believe that, Dan?”

 

He turns the faucet off and turns away, calm, deliberate. But he yanks on the paper towel dispenser so hard it falls open, the roll spilling out of its guts. He bashes the broken cover and barrels out of there, barreling past her, his red hands still dripping.

 

* * *

 

 

She shovels another forkful of syrup-soaked Eggos into her mouth, washes it down with coffee, her attention perpetually glued to her laptop. Reviewing, reviewing, memorizing, checking, double-checking, triple-checking every minute detail. If – no, _when_ – the greenlight comes from the White House, she’ll be on the next Gulfstream to Afghanistan so she has to be ready. Fuck that - she _is_ ready. Her go bag is in the trunk of her car.

 

Her doorbell rings, scaring the shit out of her. She’s never heard her own doorbell before; she doesn’t get visitors. Seven a.m. on a Sunday - what the fuck?

 

She hauls herself up off the floor, yanks on a hoodie to cover her thin tanktop. Peering through the peephole, she curses. Hesitates before opening the door.

 

“Here’s your Sunday paper,” he says, handing her the heavy roll sheathed in plastic. She takes it, tosses it onto the floor. Doesn’t let him in. He’s a wreck, unshaven and red-eyed, his once-crisp shirt untucked and soiled, his once-immaculate suit wrinkled and dirty. He smells like piss and vomit and whisky. She tells him so.

 

“Yeah and I’m not sure it’s all mine,” he says, a manic grin pulling his face, manic gleam in his eyes. His laugh is broken stone. “Not the first time I’ve had someone else’s bodily fluids on me, though, huh?”

 

He’s still drunk from whatever long night of the soul he’s coming out of. She’s scared. “What the fuck is going on with you, Dan?” He reaches for her, his hand coming up to touch her face. She jerks away, won’t let him, grabs his wrist. His hand - fucked-up knuckles, broken skin. “What happened?”

 

“I think I hit someone last night. I think I beat the shit outta someone. I dunno.”

 

Goddammit. Her stomach sinks, churns on its sugary breakfast. “Dan...” She can barely stand it, seeing him like this. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”

 

He shakes his head. “No. I walked. From wherever I was.”

 

“You should go home.”

 

“Please, My. Can I...“ He’s staring down at her, pleading silently, his icy eyes melting pools.

 

This is why she never does this. Hot cold cold hot, she can’t deal with this mind game shit! Not in her personal life. And she can’t let him in. She can’t do this. She has to work.

 

She lets go of his wrist. “Go home, Dan. Get some sleep.” He’s shaking his head no no no but she won’t relent. “I’ll call you a taxi.”

 

She leaves him there at the door, grabs her phone from the coffee table. “I’m getting you a taxi, Dan.” She goes back to him. He’s just standing there, staring down at her but staring through her now. He’s so still. Blank. Disappearing right in front of her. “Dan.” He’s shaking. She touches his arm, she can feel it through her hand, tremors coursing through him. He’s popping sweat and wild-eyed, his chest heaving like he’s just run a mile flat out. She shoves her phone in her hoodie pocket, grabs his arms, shakes him. “Dan.”

 

He was forged in the furnace of that place, those rooms from the dark side an anvil. She thought he was the hardest man she’d ever met. Now he’s falling to pieces right in front of her. Sometimes fire turns hardness so brittle.

 

She puts her arms around him. She tries to hold him together. She draws him inside with her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Just wanted to say thanks for reading and for your lovely comments! I really appreciate it! I hope you continue to enjoy the story. Thanks again!


	9. Chapter 9

 

2011 Pt. III

 

She pulls open the glass door and reaches in, turns the shower on, running it hot. He stands by the sink in his stinking, limp suit. _Goddamn_ he scared her, but at least he’s not shaking anymore. “This towel’s clean,” she tells him, hanging it on the rack for him. He nods, not looking at her. She leaves him, shuts the bathroom door behind her.

 

Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t have random menswear lying around her apartment. She’d take his nasty clothes, wash them out, but they have to be dry-cleaned. Someone’s always leaving shit in the downstairs laundry room, so she goes down there. A pair of sweatpants in the dryer. They’ll fit. She steals them, hangs them on the bathroom doorknob. The shower’s still running.

 

She makes more coffee. Thinks about stirring up a box of Jiffy cornbread muffins she finds in the cupboard. Takes out the box. Puts it away again. She’s not making him fucking muffins. She reads the Sunday paper instead, but halfway through the few useful sections, she realizes the shower is still running. It’s been a long time.

 

She calls his name as she raps on the door. Then louder because there’s no answer. She cracks the door. “Are you okay?” But when there’s still nothing, she goes in - she has to.

 

Through the glass wall of the shower she can see him sitting on the floor, curled up, being pounded by falling water. The glass should be fogged with steam, hiding his nakedness, but it’s not. She curses to herself and yanks open the shower door. The water is ice cold. It burns her wrist as she shuts off the tap.

 

She grabs the clean towel, climbs in there with him. Cold stone tile underfoot as she squats down and attacks him with the towel, rubbing the cold off his bare skin - trying to. “Jesus Christ, Dan,” she mutters, scrubbing the towel over his hair. She pulls on his arm, tries to get him to stand up. He won’t.

 

“Leave it, I’m fine,” he says flatly, fighting back shivers.

 

“No, get up, come on.”

 

He gets up, muttering apologies, trying to cover himself. She ignores that, ignores his nudity – she’s used to ignoring the nakedness of broken men. She’s all business, focused on getting him dry and then dressed in the stolen sweatpants. She makes him take some aspirin and gets him into bed, _her_ bed, covering him up, putting an extra blanket over him.

 

“Try to get some sleep.”

 

“Maya?” His voice is soft, almost shy, his sharp features vulnerable. “Stay with me?”

 

Her insides tense up, a coiling nervousness. If she does...if she gets into bed with him, takes off her clothes...could her body piece him back together? Could she take him inside of her and heal the broken things inside of him? If only it were that easy. She touches his soft hair, damp and curling. “Hang on.”

 

Getting what she needs from the living room, she comes back with her laptop and all her notes. Sliding under the covers beside him, she knows he’s watching like a hawk as she leans against the headboard and opens up her laptop. This probably isn’t quite what he had in mind but it’s the best she can do. She still has work to do, always.

 

But when he rolls onto his side toward her, buries his face against her hip, she finds all her attention diverted to the feel of warm breath bleeding through her cotton clothes, the curve of his neck and the smoothness of his bare shoulder disappearing beneath the covers, the sound of breathing growing deeper, slower, as he finally falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s late afternoon outside her bedroom blinds. She wakes up. She didn’t mean to fall asleep, she was just going to rest her eyes for a few minutes. Now she finds she’s lying down, her laptop’s on the nightstand, and there are heavy limbs wrapped around her. _Dan_ wrapped around her, still sleeping, his face pressed against her arm. That nervousness is back again, deep in her belly.

 

The blankets are pushed down some. Even though she shouldn’t, she lets herself look at him now, the way she didn’t before. The smooth, taut expanse of his back. The muscles of his shoulder and tattooed bicep stretched out long and lean. The fine hairs on his forearm are spun gold in the late-day light. Her free hand comes up. She needs to touch him, not businesslike, ignore more of the lines still left between them. Trace the ‘A’ on his wrist and the bigger tattoo further up. Slide over his shoulder blade - she never imagined his skin would be so soft. Up his neck. Coming to rest in his hair. That’s when she feels his arm tighten around her middle.

 

“I went to Gitmo.”

 

“What?” She quickly takes her hand out of his hair, embarrassed, caught.

 

“I went to Guantanamo. That’s where I was when you got back from Pakistan, that’s why I wasn’t around.”

 

“The military commissions?” Secret observation at the commissions by the CIA or any other organization is disallowed, of course. And therefore disavowed by their employer.

 

“Ammar. I was observing Ammar’s trial. His lawyers wanted to introduce evidence that he was--that he was tortured while in CIA custody. And to pursue the identities of his interrogators.”

 

The silence in the bedroom is like another blanket covering them, leaden and airless. They cling to each other.

 

“And the commission ruled?” she finally asks.

 

“The request was refused on the grounds that what happened while he was in CIA prisons is classified information.”

 

She should feel more relieved except she gets the sense there’s more to it than that – the way he’s been acting, the way he showed up here this morning. “So what happened? Seeing Ammar again, it fucked you up? It made you doubt what we did there, _how_ we did it? It made you question – what was it you said? The veracity and reliability of the information and the means by which it was collected?” He doesn’t answer her. She squeezes his arm, prompting. “Dan?”

 

“It’s more than that.”

 

“What do you mean?” She rolls onto her side so she can look at him face to face. “What do you mean, Dan?”

 

His fingers touch her cheek. “Ammar was just the trigger,” he says, lifting strands of hair off her neck, smoothing them back. She shivers a little.

 

“For what?”

 

His hand is warm and large on her neck. He leans in and their noses brush and lightly his mouth brushes hers. Once. Testing. Looking for the line but it’s gone. She meets him, meets his mouth, soft and warm. His unshaven skin bristly against her, his body pressing against her, her hand sliding up the column of his back.

 

More.

 

She takes him with her as she rolls onto her back. She wants her hands all over him. She wants to put him back together again.

 

More.

 

A buzzing runs through her and his kiss grows deeper, mouths opening, hands eager for more more. The buzzing races through her body again and she rubs against him, desperate to be unleashed. The buzzing insistent.

 

“Shit,” Dan mutters against her cheek. “Your phone.” She kisses his chin, his neck, his Adam’s apple. “Maya, honey. Answer your phone.”

 

The buzzing – her phone in her hoodie pocket. “ _Fuck_ ,” she hisses, grabbing for her pocket, tangled up in him. She manages to answer it before it goes to voicemail. It’s George. She tries not to breathe hard into the phone.

 

“They gave us a greenlight,” George tells her. _They_ – the White House, the President. She sits up. Go time. Now she’s buzzing for a wholly different reason. “Your flight’s at seven.”

 

She glances at the clock. Just over an hour. “I’ll be there.” She rings off. Looks down at Dan watching her from the pillow. She can’t read him.

 

“This is it,” he says.

 

“Come with me.”

 

He smiles a little and shakes his head. “You don’t need me there.” She starts to protest but he cuts her off. “I can’t go, I’m not... I think I’m losing my fucking mind,” he laughs, humorless. “I have to get some help, I have to see someone. Without losing my security clearance. Somehow. Dunno how that’s gonna work.”

 

She’s scared to leave him like this. He never answered her question. “Dan, what did you mean--“

 

He squeezes her hand. “When you’re back.” He sits up, touches her hair, touches her face, studies it. She studies his, its strong features and weary lines. “Just come back to me safe, huh?”


	10. Chapter 10

 

May 2011 Pt. I

 

 

The Gulfstream taxies in, heading his way across the tarmac. He waits, leaning against the car. The warm spring air swirls and gusts out here and stinks of jet exhaust fumes. He waits, his mask calm but his impatience betrayed by quickly finished cigarettes. His unquiet mind is louder than the boom of the 747s taking off in the distance. The plane slows, coming to a stop, the engines whining as they wind down.

 

On the day it all went down, he was crammed into a corner of the ops room, just about everyone else at Langley crammed in there, too, watching the distant, detached satellite feed, listening to the crackling comm transmissions. The no smoking sign on the wall taunted him.

 

It came over the line: “For God and country, Geronimo.” The room erupted. Positive ID pending, UBL was dead. He was dead.

 

Someone produced a bottle of champagne and started spraying it all over the fucking room like they’d just won the World Series. Dan scowled from his corner, instinctively repulsed by the display. He wanted to be elated, but even at that moment he knew the truth - the wounds of the past ten years ran far too deep to be healed by the death of one man.

 

They were going to be waiting a while for the Black Hawks to get back to Jallalabad, so he left that scene, preferring to be alone. He lit up as soon as he stepped outside and tried to picture how Maya was taking it, so many thousands of miles away. If he knew her at all, if he knew anything at all, he knew she wasn’t popping any fucking champagne, that was for goddamn sure.

 

When he got back to the pit, he could hear Admiral McRaven on the line and someone from the White House asking him for confirmation, for positive ID. “Is it Geronimo? Is it Geronimo?” They had to be one hundred percent.

 

“Sir, the agency expert gave a visual confirmation,” McRaven said, his voice static over the air.

 

“The girl?” the White House asked. Dan bristled.

 

“Yes, sir, the girl,” McRaven confirmed. “Hundred percent.”

 

_The girl._ He imagined her standing over the body. He wished he’d gone back there with her after all.

 

Here, now, on the hot tarmac, waiting still, he remembers thinking that “the girl” wouldn’t last a month when he first met her in Afghanistan. Ten years on, the Gulfstream’s door swings open to let out its lone passenger. Only one. Maya. Her hair is a flag of red, skin so white and eyes so blue. She stands alone, her jihad over.

 

A grateful nation’s nameless champion, she’ll never be thanked, never be recognized. There should be legions here to salute her. But there’s only him. He knows he’s not enough.

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

May 2011 Pt. II

 

It’s raining when he pulls up to the curb, the entrance to her apartment building within sight just down the way. He puts the SUV into park, cuts the engine. She makes no move to get out. He’s not sure what to do, what to expect, except maybe a slap across the face. He’s been waiting for her to do it, to tell him, “I told you so, motherfucker.”

 

He’s not sure what’s expected of him. He should go in with her, carry her duffle bag for her like a gentleman. But then what? Go inside her apartment? Ask if she wants him to stay the night? He’s not sure where he stands now. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. They sit in the half-darkness, listening to the rain, watching ribbons of light and color streak down the windshield. He can’t take it.

 

“Let’s get some dinner, huh? What’s good around here?”

 

But she ignores his question. “I was watching the news before I left Afghanistan. I didn’t expect...” She shakes her head. “Is it weird that I found it sort of disgusting?”

 

“What?”

 

“The reaction here, the way people took to the streets, the way they...celebrated. I guess I didn’t think we’d react like that.”

 

“It’s not weird,” he tells her. “I know what you mean.” She nods, shooting him a brief and grateful smile. It encourages him. He reaches across the console and takes her hand. She grips his fingers and it’s a relief. It makes him want to spill his guts.

 

“I almost touched him,” she says before he can speak. “I was standing over him and I just felt this _need_ to lay my hands on his dead body and-and say something to him. God knows what. I didn’t do it.” She’s toying with his fingers. He wonders if she realizes she’s doing it. “I don’t know how to explain what I was feeling in that moment. I’ve never been religious, I don’t pray, I don’t believe in any of that shit, I just...”

 

But it makes perfect sense to him. “You’re the hunter.” She waits for him to explain. “A lot of Native American and traditional hunting cultures believe there’s a reciprocal relationship between the hunter and the hunted. The existence of the hunter is reliant on the prey. For sustenance, for meaning. For life. It’s a sacred act. You were feeling it.”

 

She’s absorbing that. She’ll probably tell him he’s full of shit for suggesting any such thing, for spinning a metaphor out so far. Maybe he is. But what she does say, hollow and tired, is, “I hate feeling this way, Dan.”

 

“How, sweetheart?”

 

She seems to search for the right word. “ _Adrift_.”

 

He lets go of a deep breath, absently running his thumb over her knuckles as he takes that in. Adrift. Good word. It strikes home. He’s been feeling the same fucking way lately – ever since deciding he’s going to leave the CIA. It’s a recent development. It’s one of the things he has to tell her. He tries again. “Maya honey--”

 

But he doesn’t get far. Because she’s lifting his hand to her mouth, kissing his hand gently. He can do nothing but watch, silenced. She rubs the soft, smooth skin of her cheek against his big, rough fingers. She runs his hand along her jaw and trails it down her fine neck, down to the V of her black sweater and lower, pressing his hand against her heavy round breast. God _damn._ He leans closer, feeling her, breathing her in deeply and murmuring her name, his thumb finding her nipple through her sweater. She moves his hand lower still, down to her lap, down to her thigh. He curses aloud when she presses his fingers hard between her legs, rubbing him there, eager. Their fingers curl together against her sex through her jeans, fighting the thick fabric. She mewls in frustration and he crashes into her, needing to kiss her _now_ , unable to tell her about anything except his riotous need.

 

* * *

 

 

They fuck hard on her couch. She’s astride, tits bouncing against his chest, pulling his hair and scarring his shoulders with her nails. He slams her hips down on his cock, fingers bruising her curves, her sweat on his tongue. It’s sloppy and needy and mutually selfish and entirely satisfying, years poured out wordless and animal.

 

When he takes her to bed, he tries to say something else with his mouth tender between her legs, his hands languid on her skin, his body a slow moving wave deep inside her. Trying to say something softer and sweeter because he can’t say it out loud. He wants her to say it. He’s interrogating her, seeking confession, brutish tactics abandoned for gentle persuasion. When she’s coming he watches for the words to fall from her lips, searches for them on her face.

 

But she twists her face away and her eyes are squeezed shut, keening and gasping and cursing, lost in her own drawn-out moment. He buries his face against her sweaty neck and empties himself out, collapsing heavy on her small body. He clings to her, ignores a gnawing of disappointment deep inside his guts.


End file.
